Ideally, if you have a challenging issue in your daily life, you would treat it like a Tabletop and find the individual Table Legs or Specific Event(s) in your past that have led directly to it. Once the Legs are identified, you would use EFT to “remove” as many as it takes for the Tabletop to collapse, and then you’re free to move forward in your life without the challenging issue.

The above is the most ideal scenario and the EFT process does work this way for many people. If the related events are still clear in your memory and you are able to connect them clearly to your current issue, then EFT may be just that easy for you as well.

But what if the memories you need are not presenting themselves?

What if you have addressed all the events you can find but the issue persists?

What if your issue is the result of several years of discomfort rather than just a few events?

What if all of those memories blend together in a way that is hard to separate?

What if you have more than one issue and the contributing events are all related to each other?

What if the issue and the event have such a strange connection that you would never be able to see it on your own?

As it turns out, these challenges are common to most EFT users.

Emotional issues are complex by nature, and the Tabletop/Table Leg metaphor that you learned in the Uncovering Specific Events article illustrates that in part. However, navigating through a history of events to narrow in on the ones that relate to one particular issue can be a challenge. In reality, most of the issues that bother you today probably related to each other, and all of the difficult events in your past could be contributing to different issues in different ways. Many of those events might seem too small and insignificant to worry about, but after a few decades, those smaller disruptions do tend to pile up. With that in mind, we offer the Personal Peace Procedure, which is a way to systematically clear out the difficult events in your history, no matter which issue they are contributing to currently.

In essence, the EFT Personal Peace Procedure involves making a list of every bothersome Specific Event in your life and removing their emotional impacts one by one. By diligently doing this you can knock all the Table Legs out from under all of those Tabletops, and generate the relief you were looking for as well as a refreshing sense of peace in your life. You’ll be surprised by how quickly you can get there – remember that the Generalization Effect kicks in and with the Personal Peace Procedure, we can watch it in action!

This EFT Tapping method is simple:

Make a list of every bothersome Specific Event you can remember, using the criteria put forth in the Specific Event Article, namely:

It is a short “movie” from the past, preferably at least a few years ago (childhood events are usually best).

You are able to give it a title, like “the time when…”

1-3 minutes long at the time it happened.

Contains at least 1 emotional crescendo.

Has a beginning, an end, a plot and characters.

Note: You should be able to find at least 50 events. Many people will find hundreds.

Beside each movie title, rate the intensity of each event from 0-10. Examples:

Dad hit me in the kitchen (8)

I stole Suzie's sandwich (5)

I almost slipped and fell into the Grand Canyon (7)

My third grade class ridiculed me when I gave that speech (8)

Mom locked me in a closet (7)

The time Mrs. Adams told me I was stupid (6)

After the most intense events have been neutralized, cross them off the list and look for the next most intense ones. You may notice additional events coming to mind as you tap. Add those to the list and address them accordingly.

After every 5 events or so, go back through your list and re-evaluate the intensity ratings for each item. As the Generalization Effect kicks in, you will see that the events you haven’t even addressed yet are likely to become less and less intense.

If you clear one Specific Event per day for 3 months you will have resolved 90 events. Imagine how many of your Tabletops could be collapsed or weakened as a result. Can you imagine how much better your life would be without them? It doesn’t have to stop there. If you truly understand the benefit of clearing out any event from the past that is still carrying disruptions, then you can keep adding to the list and keep clearing events until you run out. And remember that the Generalization Effect will jump in and help you.

Most people will start to feel significantly better after addressing a few dozen events, but even if you have more and it takes a year or two to find freedom from the emotional or physical limits you struggle with today, isn’t that worth the effort? And here’s a bonus - if you can do all of this work on your own then you get to achieve that freedom for free.

Tips

If you cannot get a 0-10 intensity level on a particular movie then assume you are repressing it and apply 10 full rounds of EFT on it from every angle you can think of. This gives you a high possibility for resolving it.While making your list you may find that some events don't seem to cause you any current discomfort. That's OK. List them anyway. The mere fact that you remember them suggests a need for resolution.

When the list is complete, pick out the most intense events and use the EFT Tell the Story Technique on them one by one until your intensity drops to zero. You may need to go through each event a few times to find all the Aspects and reduce them all to zero. At that point, you may notice that you laugh about it, feel neutral about it, or just "can't think about it anymore."

Cautions

If your history includes long term abuse or highly traumatic events, you may find that listing them all out causes you additional distress. If this is the case, then make a shorter list, maybe 5 at a time, of events with lower intensity, and get to the others when you feel more comfortable. In addition, consider getting help from a properly trained professional who can manage your distress along the way.

If you are taking medications, you may feel the need to discontinue them. Please do so ONLY under a qualified physician’s advice.

Positive Side Effects

As you work through the events from your past in order of intensity, you may not be zeroing in right away on the exact causes of the issue from which you most want relief. However, there will be positive results along the way, and if you notice them, you will know that personal peace is starting to emerge in your life.

EFT results, no matter how we find them, are sometimes very subtle, and it is easy to overlook them or attribute them to your natural growth process. To help us see the changes as they are happening, it’s time to make a second list – one for anything in your life that could stand some improvement. Common examples are as follows:

Anything in your life can start changing for the better as you clear out the old disruptions. Once you have your “wish list” for any positive changes that you would welcome, find a way to evaluate each one before you start tapping. Maybe you write down the hours of sleep you are getting on average, or the cups of coffee you have each day, length of time you can be on your feet without pain, or the level of frustration/emotional pain (0-10) that you feel in any particular relationship.

As you tap through your events, keep checking in with this list and keep track of all the items. Some may shift right away, others may improve later, and you may notice other positive changes that weren’t even on the list. By using both of these lists in tandem, it is much easier to keep going with a process that may be on the longer side for some people.

Can you imagine what it would feel like to truly be at peace with everything that has ever happened in your life? How about being at peace with half of it? Even that would make an enormous difference for most people. Imagine how different the world would be if everyone cleared out the garbage from their past. Not only would we all feel better physically and emotionally, we would be able to understand each other and feel compassion without all of the issues in the way.

Thoughts on Other Uses Of The EFT Personal Peace Procedure

This simple Tapping concept could shift the entire healing field and, if adopted by every healing practitioner and patient, would likely (1) dramatically increase our healing rates while (2) precipitously dropping our costs.

Please note that this idea completely ignores chemical causes such as those propounded by the medical model. That's because EFT often produces improvements in clients where drugs and other chemical solutions have failed. This is not to say, however, that drugs, proper nutrition and the like don't have their place. Indeed they do. They can often be vital. In my experience, however, our unresolved Specific Events are often nearer the foundational cause for illness than anything else. Thus they deserve our high level attention..

Qualified EFT'ers are well aware of EFT's ability to cleanly wipe the negative Specific Events off of our mental walls. This is the area wherein our highest success ratios appear. To date, however, we have focused our efforts on those negative Specific Events that underlie a given ailment such as a phobia, headache or traumatic incident. This is good ... very good ... and we should continue doing so. On the other hand, why not use EFT on ALL the other Specific Events that may be lurking behind our more generalized (but VERY important) issues such as (to name a few)....

Self-image

Anxiety

Depression

Persistent insomnia

Addictions

Emotional Overeating

Compulsions

Feelings of abandonment

As you eliminate the emotional baggage from your Specific Events you will, of course, have less and less internal conflict for your system to deal with. Less internal conflict translates into a higher level of personal peace and less emotional and physical suffering. For many, this procedure may result in the complete cessation of lifelong issues that other methods have not touched. How's that for peace in a paragraph?

The same applies to physical ailments as well. I'm talking here about everything from headaches, breathing difficulties and digestive disorders to AIDS, MS and Cancer. It is becoming more widely accepted that our physical maladies are caused (or contributed to) by unresolved angers, traumas, guilt, grief and the like. Until now, however, there hasn't been an effective way to eliminate these health bandits. We can mask them with drugs, of course, but true cures have been hard to find. Fortunately, EFT now provides elegant Tapping tools that will aid the serious health practitioner in eliminating the root causes of disease. Always consult qualified physicians regarding your use of EFT for physical issues.

The EFT Personal Peace Procedure here is NOT a substitute for quality EFT training nor is it a substitute for quality help from a skillful EFT practitioner or qualified physician. Rather, it is a Tapping tool that, properly applied, is capable of wide ranging relief (quality training or quality assistance will add to its effectiveness). Its simplicity and far reaching effectiveness give it candidacy as a mandatory method for anyone seeking help for even the most difficult of problems.

It may be used:

As "homework" between sessions with a physician or therapist. This is certain to accelerate and deepen the healing process.

As a daily Tapping procedure to clear out a lifetime of accumulated emotional debris. This can enhance self-image, reduce self-doubt and provide a profound sense of freedom.

As a means to eliminate a major contributor (if not the sole cause) of a serious disease. Somewhere within one's Specific Events are those angers, fears and traumas that are manifesting as disease. By addressing them all, you will likely cover those responsible for the disease. Always consult qualified physicians regarding your use of EFT for physical issues.

As a useful substitute for finding core issues. If you neutralize all the specific issues you will have automatically included core issues.

As a means for consistent relaxation.

To become an example to others as to what is possible.

A few minutes per day with the EFT Personal Peace Procedure can make a monumental difference in school performance, relationships, health and our quality of life. We hope this common sense Tapping process becomes a worldwide routine.

REVIEW:

In this article you learned how to use the Personal Peace Procedure.

There are a variety of common reasons why many EFT users have a hard time getting to the core of their issue.

Making a list of events in your past that still carry intensity can help you navigate through your own issues and systematically clear them out.

While you are working toward resolution on one issue, there are often positive side effects in this process that provide unexpected relief on other issues.

Personal Peace Procedure is something you can do every day. Clearing one event per day would lead to 90 events cleared in just 3 months.

A greater level of Personal Peace can not only relieve existing issues, but can prevent new ones from developing.

Important note : While EFT has produced remarkable clinical results, it must still be considered to be in the experimental stage and thus practitioners and the public must take complete responsibility for their use of it. Further, Gary Craig is not a licensed health professional and offers EFT and all other methods on this website as an ordained minister and as a personal performance coach. Please consult qualified health practitioners regarding your use of anything on this website.